The present invention relates to material handling devices for lifting and picking bottles, and more particularly relates to a robotic arm with novel packing head and with integrated vacuum tooling mechanism within the robotic arm.
It is known to use material handling devices for lifting and picking an array of bottles, such as for picking up and packing an array of bottles or jugs of liquid, such as 4 or 6 plastic one gallon milk jugs. Such material handling devices can also be used on glass and other containers. Many of these devices include a vacuum head for releasably gripping the bottles, and use vacuum lines attached to sides of the robotic arm to convey vacuum to the vacuum head. However, vacuum lines attached to the sides of a robotic arm tend to shift and wear on the robotic arm, leading to wearout and maintenance issues. Also, the vacuum lines are an extra component hanging on a side of the robotic arm, which tends to get in the way of maintenance for the arm, add to expense, and cause cleanliness issues.
Aside from vacuum lines, many known packing heads engage and vacuum-grip a top of the cap on the bottles being lifted and packed, such as the plastic bottle cap attached to a top of a bottle. A problem occurs when a bottle cap is missing, since existing packing heads require the cap to be present in order to generate sufficient suction to lift the bottle(s). Thus, when a cap is missing, the pick-and-place packing line shuts down until cap-missing bottle is pulled and the problem is otherwise solved. Due to a high speed of most pick-and-place packing lines, this can result in significant shut downs lasting 3-5 minutes, which at 100+ bottles per minute of many such lines, leads to considerable delay and disruption to the process.